Windows 7 Anyone have any suggestions on Defragmentation Software?

[Moondoggy]

Hello,

I was wondering if I could get some input on defragmentation software for Windows?

I am currently using a paid product called PerfectDisk from Raxco software. I purchased this product years ago when I was still running XP and it was one of the best defragmentation tools available at that time. Since that time Raxco has continued to enhance their product and I didn't pay too much attention to these enhancements until late last week when I noticed that my laptop booted really fast and my desktop didn't. In fact on my desktop, it was taking forever for the network icon to indicate that the network was available for use and my desktop is hard wired to the router. To make a long story short I found out that PerfectDisk was loading a whole bunch of enhanced features at boot time and these features were running all the time and these features were things I really didn't need. Once some of these features were turned off my desktop PC booted really fast and my overall system performance increased. Reflecting on what I had discovered, I've began to question how much of an improvement Raxco has made to the defragmentation process itself in relation to all of the bells and whistles they've added. In addition I've began to question whether others have caught up to Raxco on their defragmentation process and whether I'm shelling out a lot of money on upgrades for bells and whistles I really don't need or want. Therefore I'm seeking out advice on this issue and would like to know if there are free products now that can do a good job of defragging my hard drive? Are these free products any better than the defragger that comes with Windows? Are there any paid versions that are better than the free versions that don't have a lot of bells and whistles? If you are using something other than the built-in defragger that comes with Windows what is the name of that product and why did you pick that product over another. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

[kemical]

When I last used a defragger (I'm now using an SSD) I used to use an app from this company, Auslogics Disk Defrag as it was a lot quicker than the windows version and seemed to do just as good a job (plus it's free)
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/

There may be other factors slowing the desktop start up like Startup programs for instance. Do both machines use Windows 7?

 

[Moondoggy]

When I last used a defragger (I'm now using an SSD) I used to use an app from this company, Auslogics Disk Defrag as it was a lot quicker than the windows version and seemed to do just as good a job (plus it's free)
http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/

There may be other factors slowing the desktop start up like Startup programs for instance. Do both machines use Windows 7?

Thanks for the reply.

Based on your reply I checked them out and they have a free and a paid version. The paid version does offline defrags which is something that PerfectDisk does that I kind of like. I took a quick look at the users manual and it seems that to run the offline defrag tool you have to set it up in some sort of scheduler and I couldn't tell if you can set it up to only do it upon request or if this is something that will take place on every boot. The fact that it has a scheduler makes me also wonder if the scheduler has to be running as a background app as that's something I'm trying to avoid. I've sent their Tech Support an inquiry asking some questions to see if I can get some further insight.

Also, there's always software that runs in the background that will slow you down but what I've found repeatedly is there are products that are setup and configured to run in the background that don't need to run that way and PerfectDisk is one of these. For the most part I have a lot of apps setup to not run on startup but this one slipped by me because of the way it hides itself. My laptop really doesn't have near as much on it as my desktop and I'm satisfied with my boot speed now that I have PD configured to not run at startup.